'Tent city' protest calls for new U. of C. trauma center

Erin MeyerTribune reporter

Darrius Lightfoot was pitching camp in an unlikely spot -- a hard sidewalk in front of the University of Chicago's Medical Center.

With a few dozen friends and volunteers, he planned to sleep in a “tent city,” the most recent in a series of efforts by youth groups aimed at convincing the medical center to open a trauma-care facility on the South Side.

The protesters planned to hold a vigil in remembrance of Damian Turner, who died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after being shot almost 10 miles away one year ago Monday.“I am here to pay my respect to my best friend, Damian. If he could have gotten treated for his wounds faster, it's a better chance he would have survived,” said Lightfoot, 19.

An unintended target, Turner was gunned down on Aug. 15, 2010, near the intersection of 61st Street and Cottage Grove, 31/2 blocks away from the University of Chicago Medical Center. But because the medical center is not equipped to treat most gunshot victims, Turner was taken by ambulance to the trauma center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Friends and family members argued that Turner might have survived had the U. of C. Medical Center been able to treat him.

Staffed with specialists, Level 1 trauma centers provide emergency care around the clock to people pulled from the wreckage of automobile accidents, as well as the victims of shootings, stabbings and other traumatic injuries.

Trauma centers are a significant drain on hospitals’ finances. The U. of C. Medical Center closed its trauma center for adults in 1988, but it still provides trauma care for children at Comer Children’s Hospital.

At the time, the city was home to several hospitals capable of handling patients with the most serious injuries, including Michael Reese Hospital on the South Side. But Michael Reese shut its doors completely, and other hospitals subsequently decided to leave the network, creating a paucity of trauma centers for adults in some parts of the city.

In a statement Sunday, U. of C. Medical Center officials said establishing trauma center would come at the expense of other vital hospital programs.

“The University of Chicago Medical Center provides life-saving medical care available nowhere else in the region, including the South Side's only pediatric trauma center, only burn unit, largest pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, and the area's primary source of advanced specialty care,” hospital officials stated. “Achieving geographic balance in trauma care will require a regional solution that does not come at the expense of these other lifesaving services.”

Turner, 18 when he died, was the founder of a group called Fearless Leading by the Youth, or FLY. Since his death, the campaign to bring a level 1 trauma center back to the South Side has become one of FLY's most important cause.